Cage by cage, he was killing them. He was killing all of them, as coldly and methodically as a machine. There were thousands of slaves crammed into Vorken’s camp, of all ages, of all kinden, soldiers and civilians both. The Mantis was making no distinction.
After the man had made an abattoir of the third cage, something snapped within Vorken and he moved to intervene. It took a single glance of those freezing eyes to stop him in his tracks. That lone moment when he might force himself to do something passed in deadly silence, then he stepped back.
The hysterical shrieking extended across the whole camp now, a cacophony of human fear and dread producing a composite sound Vorken had never heard before. It almost seemed that his Inapt charges were finding a horror in what was going on that went beyond mere inescapable death.
Vorken knew other Slave Corps officers, and many of the other camp commanders. He gritted his teeth and, hunching his shoulders against the unbearable sounds of massacre, began writing them messages as swiftly as his shaking hands could manage the pen.
Lieutenant-Auxillian Gannic, engineer and saboteur, had expected to be debriefed long before this. After returning from the Exalsee expedition, he had anticipated punishment, or at the very least being sidelined on to some low-priority job. The death of Dariandrephos, whilst anticipated as a possibility, had not been quite the result that had been expected from him.
Instead of a reprimand, he had merely received curt orders from General Lien that sent him off to Helleron and Sonn, where the chemical manufactories were already producing the noxious Bee-killer. Having been kept waiting for Gannic’s recovery of the formula, they were now churning it out as fast as could be.
Gannic understood the tactical uses for the stuff – a canister smuggled into an enemy camp, say, or thrown in amidst an army by catapult. Beyond that, somewhere his mind was somewhat loath to go, he was aware of the greater potential – indeed the original test that had been envisaged. Get enough of the stuff together and you could smother a city.
They had a great deal of the Bee-killer by now, and those factories were still working at full tilt.
He had travelled there under the command of a Red Watch captain who had barely looked at him and certainly not disclosed his name. Gannic had heard plenty about the Red Watch, and this man had confirmed all of that: hostile, quick to criticize, never explaining himself, his orders vacillating between patronizing and insufficient. Perfect officer material therefore.
Back in Capitas again, with their cargo of death, he was summoned to Lien immediately to account for himself.
The Engineering Corps’ only general looked as if he could use a little more sleep, Gannic decided. He braced himself for a tongue-lashing because he had failed to accomplish the Chasme mission perfectly – or even particularly well – and because he was a halfbreed, and therefore paradoxically, whilst less was expected of him, any failure was deemed all the more blameworthy.
Instead, Lien just scowled. ‘Report,’ he barked. And when Gannic tried to tell him about Chasme and the Exalsee he waved it away.
‘I’ve read about that. Report on the Bee-killer.’
Gannic’s unease changed direction and he spent a careful twenty minutes setting out the quantities of the chemical amassed, rates of production, logistics of transport. When he had finished, Lien remained silent, not even glancing at him. The lean, bald general seemed to be staring into some future that the man didn’t like overmuch.
This is where I get slapped down. Indeed, Gannic pressed the question, because a flat reprimand to put him in his place would at least restore his faith in the machinery of Empire. After all, at least he would know his place then, however hard he was returned to it.
‘General,’ he hazarded, ‘what’s it all for?’
Lien’s eyes flicked towards him, but the expected annoyance only flashed briefly and went out of the general’s face. What was left was a man looking older than Gannic remembered: a man for whom the wheels of both artifice and state were suddenly spinning too fast.
‘There are camps,’ the general replied. If he was surprised to find himself explaining matters of Imperial policy to a halfbreed lieutenant, he did not show it. Indeed, he seemed almost relieved to get the words out. ‘The Empress is amassing a sizeable number of slaves and captives.’
Gannic frowned, baffled. The question, To what end, sir? stuck in his throat. Having his previous impertinence actually answered left him frightened. Being told such things seemed bad for his health.
‘But such matters are not your concern!’ A new voice intervened, an unsteady voice. ‘Give the halfbreed his orders and send him on his way, Lien. She has other work for you.’
Lien did not look at the newcomer, but Gannic could not resist. He saw a man who had once been strong framed but seemed almost eaten away now, as though by a disease. His eyes were certainly fever-bright, and they flinched and twitched as if constantly trying to stare into the sun.
After a long moment of blankness, Gannic found a name to tack onto this sick-looking creature. Can that really be General Brugan of the Rekef?
‘You’re to take an airship loaded with the Bee-killer to Myna, under Red Watch orders,’ Lien said bluntly. ‘Do everything that’s asked of you. Then come back. There’ll be more.’
Myna? Gannic turned the city over in his mind. Not a place that anyone felt over-fond of, surely, save for the Mynans themselves. And he had the feeling that their views had just ceased to count for anything.
‘Do you understand your orders?’ Lien demanded of him. Gannic tried to lock eyes with him, but the general shook off his gaze without even acknowledging it.
‘Yes, sir.’ What else, in the end, could Gannic say?
When she awoke, he was there, and she could feel the blood inside him, full of it as a tick and yet still hungry: Tisamon.
For a moment she thought he had come to challenge her. Never mind what he might have done to amass such power, she was ready for him to turn it on her now, to wrestle for his freedom. If she had shown any weakness just then, perhaps he might have done so. Instead she struck the instant she was aware of him, holding him with her raw power, and then binding him anew with his oaths and honour and, in the process, finding out the truth.
‘What have you done?’ she screamed at him. ‘I need them! I need them to die for me! You’ve wasted them – what if I don’t have enough now?’
He weathered her outburst and told her, I have saved them for you.
For a moment she misunderstood him, but, yes – the power was still within him. He was not a thief of blood, but a receptacle.
You need them, but you need them dead, he told her. For you I have done this. I shall slay all your enemies. I shall lay their very essence at your feet. Make use of me.
For there it was, a growing frustration she had sensed in him: knowing that the whole world was engaged in war and he could play only the smallest part. The great battles that a creature such as he was made for were fought only in the oldest of histories, but so were the great rituals that she sought to emulate.
‘Yes,’ she agreed at last. ‘In this you can serve. You cannot kill them all. Not even you could kill them all, or even most of them. I will yet have to rely on the toys of the artificers, to make up the balance. Their deaths shall be sweeter at your hand, though – true Inapt deaths to feed the ritual. But I will need to calculate, to redraw my figures. This changes the measure of my power.’ And here her eyes grew hard. ‘You will kill only on my command, Tisamon. I know you sought to please me, and I am pleased, but you will shed blood on my word, and not on your own whim. I have no use for servants that will not obey.’